Building Food Security, Creating Jobs: Policy Pathways for the Region

Food security is a major concern for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan (MENAAP). Across the region, food insecurity and malnutrition are rising at a pace not seen in recent decades, affecting high-income, middle-income, and conflict-affected countries alike. While one in six MENAAP residents lacks secure access to food, the region simultaneously records some of the highest rates of overweight and obesity in the world. Mounting pressures from conflict, water scarcity, climate shocks, and economic volatility make the need for food system transformation both urgent and unavoidable. Yet transformation also presents a crucial opportunity. MENAAP's agrifood systems are already a major engine of employment, and they hold untapped potential for creating better, more inclusive jobs, particularly in rural areas and for women and youth. This report argues that confronting the region's food security crisis and its chronic jobs challenge goes hand-in-hand. Drawing on regional data, original quantitative modeling, new survey evidence, and country case studies, the report examines the full complexity of the challenge: the evolution of food demand, the constraints on domestic production under climate change and severe water scarcity, trade management, the devastating impact of conflict on food systems, and the role of the private sector in driving sustainable change as well as the potential for job creation. The central message is one of possibility. Substantial gains in food security and job quality are within reach, but they require greater ambition in both investment and policymaking. The report offers governments a concrete policy roadmap showing how coordinated, cross-sectoral reforms can simultaneously strengthen food and nutrition security and unlock the potential for more and better jobs across the agrifood system.